Lego adventures: Ice fishing

Finally we have some nice weather to feature the following Lego Minifigure:

Ice Fisherman

More Lego fun may follow...

R&C

Holidays and the winter that never was

This is a short blog about our holidays which, sadly, has come to an end. Ronnie and I had a very nice two week holiday over Christmas, which we spend mostly indoors doing as little as possible. Actually that is not entirely true since we did a lot of fun things on which I will elaborate on a bit more below (more complete blogs on some of these may follow).

Thus far this winter the weather was very disappointing. We only had one good snow storm but since the temperatures stayed above 0, the snow quickly melted. What was left was a rainy, wet winter with temperatures oscillating between 1 and 5 deg C and clouds that never cleared. Perfect weather for cozy indoor fun. The first part of the vacation we spent time on preparing for Christmas and enjoying the Christmas spirit. The second part were spent mostly playing with our presents. New Year was (unlike most previous New Years) snow free. We went up to the castle to watch the fireworks. Every New Year people congregate on various spots in town and shoot their own fireworks. We did not take any ourselves, but watched the usual mayhem of slightly unstable hands lighting up fireworks, with the occasional accidental explosion on the ground between crowds of yelling people. The castle is a very nice place to watch these goings on with a nice panorama over town with fireworks everywhere and the church bells ringing in the New Year.

Christmas tree and presents

Christmas food

Fusion South African Swedish Christmas food

New Year at the castle

So a bit more about what kept us busy during these two weeks of deserved laziness ….

As Christmas presents to ourselves we bought two sets of Lego modular buildings, the “Grand Emporium” and the “Fire Brigade”. Quite a few hours were spent assembling these giant 3d puzzles. But the end result was very nice actually.

Lego modular buildings:  "Grand Emporium" and "Fire Station"

The second present to ourselves was the “Wii U Fit” software and balance board. Using the Wii game console and the TV in combination with the balance board, the Wii Fit offers a wide range of routines to help you exercise and monitor your own fitness and weight. This is the perfect way to keep yourself moving even though it is cold and rainy outside. The routines are combined with fun games and there are nice graphs that tracks your progress.

To balance out the exercises on the Wii Fit with the appropriate amount of laziness, we laid in front of the television for hours, watching many different series. We finished the “Game of Thrones” series, which is highly recommended and also watched various anime series. At the moment we are continually watching the “Hunter x Hunter” anime and watch them as they become available each week. We finished the first series of “Attack on Titan” which is a really nice series so far. During the holidays we also watched the whole “Death Note” series. All three of these animes are highly recommended to watch. They have very strong storylines, multifaceted characters and gripping intrigues. Especially recommended is “Death Note”, a series that sweeps you up in the plot and keeps you captivated until the end.

As the vacation draws to an end (we are starting work again tomorrow), we are looking forward to an eventful 2014 and eagerly anticipate the actual start of winter (seemingly from next weekend on).

Wishing everybody a prosperous 2014!

C&R